I recently accidentally invented a new stitch on my knitting looms because I misread the instructions for an already existing stitch. It’s an awesome mistake though. It’s a muck up of the mock crochet stitch (also known as the z stitch or the zig zag stitch) which you can find out more about here.

What I basically did was read the cast on instructions and assumed it was the stitch instructions. So instead of wrapping three, knitting off, wrapping three, knitting off, I instead did this: wrap one, knit off, wrap two, knit off, wrap three, knit off and repeat. That’s a terrible explanation. I made this video which explains the stitch much, much better:

To show the difference between the actual mock crochet stitch and the three step stitch, I made up two samples. The top one is the mock crochet and the bottom one is the three step. Each one is four rows. You can see that the three step is bulkier and has bigger holes and taller rows. It’s also stretchier.

So the pattern for the hat is pretty easy. You need to know how to do an e-wrap stitch, purl stitch and the three step stitch. I used the 31 peg loom to make this hat, but you could easily adapt this hat to any size loom, as the stitch doesn’t require an odd or even number of pegs, it’s just worked around till the working yarn is back on the final peg.

If you don’t know how to do the purl stitch, the video that I found really helpful is this one, but a quick YouTube search for “purl stitch on round loom” will give you lots of videos to pick from.

So you want to start with an e-wrap cast on followed by four garter ridges. A garter ridge is made up of one row of e-wraps followed by one row of purls. So the brim will be like this:

So do 6-8 rows of the three step stitch, until you hat is about 20cm long (ish). Then finish with a drawstring cast off. Easy!

The type of yarn you use, as well as the tension, will determine what the hat looks like and how many rows of the three step stitch you need to do. With the fuzzy purple yarn and a tighter tension I found I needed to do 8 rows of the three step stitch to make a hat. With the multi-coloured yarn and a looser tension, six rows was sufficient. Also, with the multi-coloured yarn, I used two strands as one for the brim, to make it thicker.

This pattern is so easy to adapt to different sizes and yarns. You could make the brim longer or shorter as you wish or you could use different sized looms to make hats for larger or smaller heads. As the three step stitch is super stretchy, this hat is perfect for anyone with a lot of hair, or even dreadlocks, as the hat would easily expand to fit them.

If you make this hat, or anything with this three step stitch, please leave me a link or comment below, I’d love to see your work!